Staff Update

March 12, 2014 by 12 Comments

staff-update-march-2014

Has it really been three months since our last Staff Update? Even though you’ve been enjoying posts from these guys for quite some time now a proper introduction is in order. From left to right, please join me in welcoming [Bil Herd], [Rich Bremer], [Nick Conn], and [Abe Connelly] to the team.

[Bil] started out with a guest post on the C128 which I absolutely loved. We got to talking and he mentioned an interest in putting out some video content. His first offering for Hackaday was the segment on calculating component heat. He has a few more in the pipeline and I’m sure he’d love to hear your ideas for the subjects of future videos.

I like to choose contributors who have a wide range of interests: [Rich] has a mechanical engineering background. Nick, who is working on his Ph.D., has quite a bit of experience with medical devices. This is not to be confused with the type of bio-medical hacking which [Abe] is interested in. Learn more about all of their backgrounds over on the Hackaday Staff page.

All of the people who have joined us over the last six months came form a pool of applications received after a September hiring announcement. I posted another one last week and have received numerous applications. I’m still reviewing them so don’t worry if you haven’t heard from me, you will soon!

 

Hacked Turntable Plays A Tree’s Rings Instead Of Records

March 12, 2014 by 54 Comments

Here’s another one of those crazy, weird, artsy-style hacks. Somebody decided to see what tree rings sound like by making this rather unorthodox turntable.

All things considered, the cross-section of a tree trunk does kind of resemble a vinyl record. [Bartholomäus Traubeck] noticed this and decided to see what would happen if you could listen to it.

Of course… it’s not quite that simple. When you cut a slice of wood, you’re not leaving any grooves in the rings, so you can’t just throw it on a slightly modified record player. What [Traubeck] had to do was engineer a record player with a Playstation Eye camera strapped to the end of the arm — simple image recognition software creates a signal based on the pattern of the rings, knots, and other imperfections in the wood. This is then filtered into a program called Albeton Live, and converted into a very angst-y piano track.

Take a listen and let us know what you think!

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Developed On Hackaday: Coding Conventions And GitHub Pull Requests

March 12, 2014 by 100 Comments

The Hackaday community is currently very busy coding the low-level libraries of our open-source offline password keeper project. And when many talented contributors work together on a common concept, interesting discussions take place. In our dedicated Google Groups, some of them were about the choice of naming/coding conventions and also how/when to approve GitHub pull requests. But don’t leave already… this topic is actually more interesting than it sounds.

The age difference between the older and younger firmware contributor is guessed to be approximately 30 years… and many things can happen in such a time frame. Even though our coders are writing in C, most of them code in other programming languages at school/work. They also use different text editors on different operating systems. Understandably, each one of them therefore has its preferred coding / naming convention and indent style. The Mooltipass conventions were selected based on majority voting, and after many emails we settled on an Allman style convention with camelCase:

main(void)
{
    if (foo)
    {
        functionCall();
    }
    else
    {
        foo = 0;
        anotherFunctionCall();
    }
}
– 79 characters line length as a soft requirement
– 4 spaces, no tabs

Most of the contributors believe that it is the best compromise between code clarity and cross-platform compatibility, but we would be curious to know our Hackaday readers’ opinions on this particular topic.

The second matter is a bit more of a management one. What is the best strategy to manage and review code changes made to a main GitHub repository, when a project is at its infancy and composed of (more or less) non-remunerated contributors?
It is perfectly understandable that interest, spare time and willingness to contribute may vary over time. Perhaps some of our readers may already be familiar with Agile software development, a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, which promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Do you think this can be applied to the Mooltipass project?

We would be curious to hear similar experiences on these topics, as we gladly accept constructive criticism. You may also want to join our dedicated Google group to check out the different discussions that already happened there. On a side note, we are also currently looking for capacitive wheel / touch button footprints libraries for Kicad.

The Future Doesn’t Need Another Internet-Connected Teddybear – Hackaday At SXSW Create

March 12, 2014 by 9 Comments

Hackaday happened to be at South by Southwest this year and visited SXSW Create – part of the festival dedicated to hackers, makers and DIY scene. While modest in size, this event serves as a great contrast to the internet-hype machine omnipresent everywhere else in the city during this time. So we thought we should drop by and show them some love.

sxsw-launchpad-croppedTrey German showed us a couple of great real-time power control demos using his C2000 Launch Pad as well as his Bluetooth Cooler which, for whatever reason, decided to fail on him just in time for the big show. The demo we have been looking forward to the most was a thermocouple-controlled barbecue using Energia framework but were disappointed to learn that The Man has banned grilling hotdogs in the tent. The universe was telling us we’re not here to party.

atx_hackerspace_TARDISATX Hackerspace had a large booth featuring the full-size replica of Doctor Who’s TARDIS (who wouldn’t like to have a picture taken in one ?) and a fully-functional 1930-es vacuum tube radio with a mandatory iPad dock. We have also learned that a massive collection of working vintage vacuum tubes has been donated to the hackerspace, so if you’re in need you know who to call.

The event has also featured a long list of industry participants. The product launch we were most impressed with was Easel by Inventables, an in-browser app that enables easy control of their Shapeoko CNC milling machine and definitely has the potential of bringing the joys of design and fabrication to much larger masses.

e_coli_ut_austin_experiment1However, the most interesting things we saw were the ones a bit outside of the current tech mainstream. [Dennis] from UT Austin iGEM team showed some of the crazy work the synthetic biologists are doing out there. They have engineered Escherichia coli so that it is addicted to caffeine, used cell growth as a measure of caffeine content in particular drinks, and used that to rank local Austin coffee shops! We have also talked with several guys working on automated gardens and soil sensors who were educating attendees about the huge potential that increased environmental data aggregation can have on the ways we grow food.

To quote the Growerbot guys : “We definitely have enough Internet-connected teddy bears. We need more Internet-connected tomato plants”.

Stick with us after the jump to see a gallery with all our adventures at 2014 SXSW.

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Tiny Improvised Grinder/Saw Packs A Punch

March 12, 2014 by 29 Comments

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes the necessity is simply avoidance of unpleasant tasks such as cutting down 3500 header pins by hand. [Nixieguy] and his coworkers were faced with 50 prototype boards bearing 70 overly long pins apiece. He saved them from cutting them all down by hand by making a tiny improvised circular saw/grinder.

[Nixieguy] started by laser-cutting a combination tool holder and grinding platform. His laser failed before he could fashion a guard to keep the pin bits out of the motor or cut all the pieces he had in mind. The grinder is made from a 10A brushless RC motor, a motor driver, and a servo tester. [Nixieguy] machined an adapter to connect the disc to the shaft.

The transformer is there to hold the thing down during use since it’s so lightweight. He’s wearing two pairs of gloves because the pin cuttings were hot enough to sear skin. [Nixieguy] is planning on a complete redesign including a motor guard and the ability to adjust the depth. Maybe he can turn it into a chainsaw, maybe not.

An Open Source IPad Display Adapter

March 12, 2014 by 45 Comments

Those fancy 2048×1536 pixel resolution displays found in the iPad 3 and 4 can be used for much more than high def Candy Crush and Netflix viewing. [Freddie] over in Southampton, UK built his own adapter to connect these high-resolution LCD panels to anything with a DisplayPort connection. It’s called OSCAR, and it’s the open source way to add a whole lot of pixels in a second (or third, or fourth….) monitor.

The LCD panels found in the iPad 3 and 4 don’t use the usual LVDS connection found in just about every other LCD panel ever made. It uses an extension of the DisplayPort protocol, meaning any graphics card with one of these ports already does the heavy lifting for this panel. The only other thing that’s needed is an adapter to control the power and backlight, which is easily handled by an ATMega32U4. This makes OSCAR Arduino compatible, making it easy to add sensors and USB playthings.

OSCAR is available on Kickstarter for £65 (~$100 USD) for the board itself. Adding to that, you’ll need to grab an iPad retina display through the usual channels for about $65. Not exactly cheap, but try finding another better-than-1080p display for that price.

Prop Replica Tesseract Case Has Some Serious Tech Inside

March 12, 2014 by 4 Comments

tesseractpng

[Dustin Evans] is a big fan of the recent Avengers movies — heck, we are too! So he decided to make this awesome Tesseract Case prop replica!

Tesser-what? A tesseract, or cubic prism is a geometric shape that is technically a four-dimensional hypercube — in the Avenger’s movie, it is an incredibly powerful and unstable alien energy source.

To make the replica, [Dustin] picked up a cheap aluminum tool case from the hardware store, took some measurements and began designing the inside of it using SketchUp. He’s crammed in an Arduino with a spectrum shield, a BlueSmirf Bluetooth modem, a Raspberry Pi, a 7″ LCD, speakers and an amp, a WiFi card for the Pi, and a few strips of Neopixels. It is running Raspbian with a stand-alone version of XBMC, which means using AllCast he can wirelessly control the box from a phone or tablet — now all he’s missing is a mini-generator that can put out a few million watts!

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